Tema is short of registration forms

Tema, March 22, GNA- The Tema Municipal Office of the Electoral Commission (EC) has complained of shortage of registration forms for most of the registration centres, especially in Ashaiman.
Mrs Philomena Adusei, Tema Municipal Electoral Officer told the alone receiving about 3,000 but they are still complaining of shortage. She suspected the cause might be with increase in population because it appears projections made by the EC in 2002, is not meeting the growing population as people have migrated to the urban centres.
She said for instance, the ICODEH polling centre in Adentah, formerly Joy International Centre, had about 411 voter population and the EC in making its projections doubled the figure to at least cater for any increase within the period "but it looks as if the population is now thrice the figure because as at yesterday about 1,500 people have registered and more are expected to register".
Mrs Edusei expressed surprise that people especially those politicians have associated the problem with a political sabotage saying that she had to do a lot of talking before such people could understand that it is not sabotage.
Meanwhile at the Community one Police station, two registration officials have called for more hands to work with in order to meet the growing eligible voters calling at the station to register.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency on Monday at the registration centre, Mr Richard Annor Mensah, a registration officer said so far, 1,500 people have registered as at 8.10 am and many people were in a queue urging to register.
He said the centre is newly created and all the people in site 12 would like to register in that particular polling centre instead of going to site one and "this is creating congestion at the area for us.
The registration assistant said she is supposed to be doing the shading but because of the long queue, she had to stop and register them, else they would leave and may not return.
To them at the centre, they do not know how much allowance they are entitled to "but we are working out of patriotism to ensure that the exercise goes on smoothly".
At the five polling stations at the Padmore school centre, a total of 2,104 people have registered and the registration officers described the turn out as very encouraging.
The Community two Police station centre has recorded 19 people had registered as at 9.30 a.m. brining the total to 827 registered so far. The registration officer, Mr Jerry Samuel Ankomah said the people came in their numbers to register during the early stages of the exercise and hoped it will be the same getting to the end.
The Akodzo and Twedaase centres had recorded a total of 1,896 registrations as at 9.45 am.
With all the centres visited only representatives of the National Democratic Congress and New Patriotic Party have been present since the beginning of the exercise and the registration officers could not assign reasons to that.
The registration officers however, appealed to the electorate to come at the stipulated period to register instead of coming in late in the evenings when visibility is getting poor.